


A Heart in Harness

by yekoc



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Temeraire Fusion, Dragons, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18904579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekoc/pseuds/yekoc
Summary: “It’s a brute,” says the prince. “But I suppose I must do my part for diplomacy.”





	A Heart in Harness

At first Damen thinks that they have come for him, the men with their swords drawn in the dead of night. But he’s wrong--or wrong, at least, in the ways that count. They subdue him, finally, the five men that survive, and then they leave him chained and bleeding on the floor of his chambers. They take the egg.

Damen wakes, stiff and in pain, to the breaking light of day. The men have taken his sword, of course, but in their hurry have forgotten the iron poker lying near the brazier. His stiff muscles groan as he uses it to level open the weakest link of chain, and then he’s limping from the room, limbs protesting. He tries to think. If they’ve stolen the royal egg, they cannot keep it in Akielos. 

_Kastor,_ whispers a terrible voice inside him, but even if it could be--Kastor has his dragon already, swift Myrine, studded with the fearsome matte spikes of the night-fighting Nyxos.  


Any other Akielon would recognize a Drakon Vasilios as belonging only to a member of the royal family, under pain of death--it can’t have been stolen for an Akielon’s own use, can’t be sold for money within the borders of his country.

They must be trading it, he realizes. To Vask, perhaps, where they breed from all bloodlines without discrimination, where they would pay insane sums for the size and strength of a Drakon Vasilios. A ship, to Patras, then overland on a caravan. Damen ducks around a corner, then heads for the tunnel that will lead him to the docks.

________

When he wakes in the hold of the ship, his first thought is not for himself but a frantic searching, eyes straining in the muggy dark. At last he sees it, lashed as heavily as he is, but whole and cradled in tarps in the far corner.

As long as he is near the egg, Damen cannot think of escape.

________

Disgust is writ plainly across the prince’s face.

Damen struggles to keep hold of himself, seeing it. A Drakon Vasilios is hatched once a generation in Akielos, meant to be the companion and counselor of the heir to the royal throne. They are the pinnacle of dragonkind--enormous, twice as large as any but the fabled Vaskian dragonqueens, muscled and armored with heavy scales, powerful enough to pull down a castle or drag two ships from the ocean, one in each claw like children’s toys. Legend says that they are born with the wisdom of all their ancestors, a living link to all Akielos’s history, her knowledge and glory. 

“It’s a brute,” says the prince. “But I suppose I must do my part for diplomacy.”

“They’re said to be quite strong,” says the Regent. “I do hope you won’t be overmatched. It comes with a keeper–perhaps he can teach you how these things are best handled.”

A tug on his chains drags Damen forward, and he drops to his knees in front of the man who will steal his dragon.

________

“Not like that,” Damen snaps, unthinking, and reaches out to smooth his hand protectively over the warm shell. Before he can reach it, Prince Laurent slaps him across the face.  
“You forget yourself,” he says.

 _She is my dragon,_ Damon wants to say, for the thousandth time, and cannot. Instead he stands there trembling, holding both their lives within the tenuous grasp of his self-control.

When he regains himself, Prince Laurent is looking at him coolly.

“Well?” he asks. “What was it I did wrong? Without touching the egg, please.”

“Your gloves,” Damen says. “It’s an insult. In Akielos.”

“Ah,” says Laurent. “Of course, the land of the nude barbarians. I wasn’t aware that extended to your--Drakon.”

Beasts, he had been about to say--Damen is sure. But stopped himself.

“Yes, in Akielos we touch, we share our warmth with the Drakon, a gift to them. I suppose in Vere you let them watch while a pet fondles you through eight layers of trousers.”

“Get him out,” says Laurent to the soldier standing nearby. The last thing Damen sees as the blindfold is tied around his eyes once again is Laurent, slowly stripping off his thin leather gloves.

________

“The prince wants you, now,” says the soldier, and Damen barely has time to wonder at the late hour before he is in Laurent’s chambers. It is clear immediately that something is wrong--the flush of Laurent’s cheeks, his unsteadiness on his feet.

“The egg,” says Laurent, just as the attack comes. But they are not in the hatchery, Damen thinks, and then sees it--nestled by the fire, sheathed in a bed of silks, with a mussed pillow beside it. They close around it protectively, instinctively, back to back, and fight off the men who would steal it.

“I cannot--I am not at my most alert,” says Laurent, a bitter understatement, as the men lie dying around them. “If more come--”

He is asking for Damen to stay.

“I wouldn’t leave her,” says Damen.

“The drug they gave me,” says Laurent. “Just for sleep, I think. I can’t--” he is swaying on his feet, and Damen is suddenly, blazingly amazed at Laurent’s quickness and strength in the just-ended fight. He looks dead on his feet; it must have been sheer willpower pushing him through, bitter strength of mind.

“I’ll watch,” says Damen.

“Yes,” says Laurent, and settles himself like a cat upon the cushion near the egg. “See that you do,” and then he lays one hand upon her, and falls asleep.

________

“You cannot be there when she hatches,” Laurent says to him. He is--almost gentle about it, as much as Damen has ever heard him be, but that doesn’t staunch the fury that blazes through Damen. Behind him, the egg rocks again. Damen sees it with his whole self, feels the echo of it in his core.

“She is Akielon,” says Laurent. “She--I have been trying, to have her know me, but there hasn’t been much time, and my Akielon is not what it could be.” His mouth twists with the admission.

He does not know, Damen realizes--she will speak Veretian out of the shell; she has heard it spoken now for a month or more, and she would have needed much less time than that. He burns again at the wrongness of it, that this jeweled weapon of Akielos should find itself in barbarian hands, clumsy and fumbling and ignorant of its worth.

A fissure appears, the full length of the egg. Laurent goes white.

“Get out,” he says to Damen, and when Damen cannot make himself go Laurent says to him in a voice like ice, “They will kill her. If you harness her, she is dead.”

The truth of it chases Damen back to his cell. As he leaves, he hears a cracking.

________

Damen spends three full days in his cell. They have chained him, but it doesn't matter--he is more trapped than ever before, tied to this place, to that man, by the still-fragile life of the dragon. He does not let himself imagine any possibility but this one: that Laurent has harnessed her successfully, that she lives. That when she is full-grown, they will escape together, tearing the castle at Arles down behind them as they go.

When Laurent finally comes for him, Damen is almost surprised at the dragon's small size; he has spent so long imagining her fully-grown, a queen. But the little thing that toddles in after the prince, golden harness shining in the dank light of the cell, is no bigger than a mountain cat. 

"Hello," the Drakon says, in a high, musical voice. Damen freezes, swallows. A commoner in Akielos, a trainer, would bow to her--he goes to one knee, and it is easy: she is so beautiful, the shimmering gray of expensive marble, fine-veined. A living statue; a miracle. 

"Laurent tells me that I must meet you, but I do not see why. You are in chains; you cannot be so important as all that. Why are we here?" she asks, turning to Laurent. "It is dirty, and there is no food."

Laurent's mouth twists. 

"You must meet your trainer at some point," he says, "but perhaps we can find a more pleasant venue for these... sessions."

“I do not see why you cannot be my trainer," the Drakon says, stiffly, in the tone of one who has already lost an argument and is determined to try again. "You are very clever, after all, although not quite so clever as me."

Laurent's face twists further. Damen would find it funny, except that the dragon so clearly likes him--he has won her over already, somehow. She cannot have seen his full self yet, his slippery nature, his delight in violence. 

"I am no expert on dragonkind," says Laurent. "In my family, we do not usually--we are not all so lucky as I am, to have a companion like you." 

Jealousy is a knife in Damen's side. The royal family of Vere do not ride dragons at all, preferring the easy comforts of ground command to the risk of dragonflight. He looks at her, her translucent, delicate wings, the golden points of her talons, and sees his birthright--lovelier than he could ever have guessed, and taken from him so completely. 

"What is your name?" the Drakon asks him, and when he chokes out "Damen, your majesty" she pauses, cocking her head. 

"You sound--I remember that sound," she says, slowly. "Have we met?"

"No, your majesty," Damen says, gritting his teeth against all his instincts. His heart pounds through the lie. 

"You sound--you are Akielon!" she says, suddenly thrilled, and steps closer to him. 

"I am Akielon too, you know," she says, in Damen's language, "although I am also Veretian, because I have been born here, and because I have Laurent. But I see now why Laurent has brought me you--"

"Eurydike," Laurent says, "Veretian, please." 

He says it quietly, but Damen can see the tension that locked across him the instant the Drakon spoke Akielon. Another attempt to claim her for Vere, he thinks, but--Laurent's eyes are wide, not with anger but with fear. Damen remembers his warning. _They will kill her_. 

Eurydike--the name cannot be helping Laurent's cultural anxieties--looks at Laurent in confusion, but when she speaks again, it is in Veretian. 

"I do not understand," she says. "But there is much here that I do not understand. I shall learn."

She looks at Damen again, wide-eyed, considering. "You will help me. You and Laurent. Together."

Damen looks at Laurent, at his cold eyes, the casual arrogance of his face. Remembers the way he slapped Damen as though he was no one, barely worth looking at; the way he kept him chained, beaten, bereft. But then Damen looks at Eurydike, and knows that he is lost. She is so young, and so small still, clumsy and elegant at the same time, like a young foal finding its legs. She looks from him to Laurent, wide-eyed and sure of herself, and Damen, empty-chested, aches with longing. 

For her, Damen thinks, he will stand side by side with the man who stole his heart away. For her. 

For now.


End file.
